NEM Summit 2013 – Nantes

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The NEM Summit is an international conference and exhibition, open to co-located events and organised every year since 2008 by Sigma Orionis and Eurescom on behalf of the NEM European Technology Platform for all those interested in Future Internet developments and in the fast paced evolution of the networked electronic media industry. Over the years, the NEM Summit has grown to become an annual not-to-be-missed event, providing attendees with a key opportunity to meet and network with prominent stakeholders, access up-to-date information, discover latest technology and market trends, identify research and business opportunities, and find partners for upcoming EU-funded calls.

The 2013 edition of the NEM Summit was successfully held from October 28 to 30 at “La Cité” event center in Nantes, France on the theme “Implementing Future Media Internet towards new horizons – Maximising the global value of Content, Media and Networks”. It attracted over 300 delegates and 18 exhibitors from Europe and other regions of the world, and was supported by 8 sponsors. The conference was structured in plenary and parallel thematic sessions, featuring 30 speakers and authors selected following a competitive call for papers. On this occasion the NEM ETP introduced its new vision for Horizon 2020: “Dedicated to content, connected, converging and interactive media & creative industries”

Beyond the conference itself, the programme included several side events:

Investment & Entrepreneurship Forum: It was organised for the second time under the aegis of the European Commission (DG CONNECT) to support interaction between entrepreneurs and investors and to encourage transfer of research results to innovation, spin offs and entrepreneurs. Eleven European SMEs and entrepreneurs specialized in Networked Electronic Media development, and selected on the basis of applications to be submitted a couple of weeks prior to the meeting were coached and presented their business concepts to a group of ten European investors carefully chosen to fit to companies’ and projects profiles and needs for investment. The event also gave researchers and entrepreneurs new insights in how to seek financing, be ready to go-to-market and monetize young companies and the market, business and technological visions and trends, taking the opportunities of the attendance of NEM experts from research, industry and investment communities at the NEM Summit.

Creative@NEM: this consisted of several events namely the NEM Summit Art + Tech Hackathon, and the Open Platform workshop, aiming at attracting, involving artists and facilitating stronger connection between the NEM constituency and the creative industries, for their highest mutual benefit.

The Art + Tech Hackathon proved a great success in terms of participation and outcomes, providing the innovative potential of the combination of Art and ICT: both participants and attendees were highly satisfied with the overall work and collaboration quality. Participants were given several challenges awarded with 1000 euros each: 5 were offered by the EC funded project FI-CONTENT 2, and 2 respectively from NEMart and Wiki-art. Multidisciplinary teams of up to five persons were formed on the 29th October in the morning, and each of them worked hard for 24 hours on the given challenges, using in same cases the technical specifications furnished by the challenge offerers. Students from Nantes Design School, bio-hackers, artists and developers from London found together excellent solutions for the set challenges.

The Open Platform workshop, organised by FI-CONTENT 2, a major ongoing project supported by the European Commission under its FI-PPP programme aiming at building Europe’s Future Internet has allowed interested stakeholders to gain better knowledge of the potential of the 3 open platforms made available by the project (addressing social connected TV, smart city guides, and pervasive games) and of the various existing possibilities to get involved and funded: FI CONTENT 2 Competition and Open call, FI-PPP Call 3.

Moreover art and technology have never been more connected at the NEM Summit through the demonstration of artists such as the beatboxer Ezra, artist in residence at Grenoble’s Atelier Arts-Sciences with his “interactive glove” demonstration and the digital magician Gilles Rousseau with the art work “Digital tree” and “the iPad Show”.

Diverse Data Innovation Workshop: This workshop brought together some of the best European SME, public and corporate innovators currently working with diverse forms of big, open, diverse and integrated data, giving insight into the latest innovation across Europe in relation to data, spanning healthcare, media, creative, finance and cities sectors. The workshop also introduced new collaborations between SME’s, entrepreneurs and large organisations to address data challenges and solutions and formed new cross-European partnerships to apply for Horizon 2020 data challenge related funding. The BBC and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult aim to keep the momentum going and will work together to develop new mechanisms to bring more data innovators and SME’s spanning media, creative and technology sectors into future NEM and H2020 opportunities. The contributions of this workshop will help to consolidate a NEM ‘position paper’ being written on this subject. (Presentations made during the workshop are available here)

The 2013 NEM Summit also hosted a “Green@NEM” workshop, addressing possible connections between NEM developments and the environment – energy sectors. It focused on the synergies to be developed between the NEM and EeB (Energy efficient Buildings) sectors, to boost research and innovation at the crossroads of ICT, content, networks, media, buildings, energy and the environment. Again, the contributions from this workshop will seed the basis of a NEM ‘position paper’ on the ‘green’ dimension of the content industries.

Many EU-funded projects and other initiatives had taken advantage of the 2013 NEM Summit to co-locate parallel workshops and exhibit: FI-CONTENT 2, PROLIGHT, EIG, ICT & Art Connect, HBB NEXT, Reverie, Vconect, Steer, Ideal-IST, Visionair, Future Internet PPP, and Ouest Valorisation.

2013 NEM Summit sponsors and exhibitors

During the closing session of the 2013 NEM Summit, the Programme Committee announced the following awards:

• Best paper award: Despite the high quality of most papers presented at the conference, the jury had unanimously decided to grant the “Best paper award” to the authors Hans Stokking and Victor Klos from TNO and Jin Jiang and Claudio Casetti from Politecnico di Torino for their paper on “Social Backup and Sharing of Video using HTTP Adaptive Streaming” (presentation to be downloaded here).
• Best Forum/Workshop award was granted to the team of Media Deals for the success of the second edition of the “Investment & Entrepreneurship Forum“
• Best demo award was granted to the Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH (IRT) for the quality of their exhibition booth.

The winners received, in recognition of their work, a piece of art made with acid etched, laser welded stainless steel and walnut by the artist David Blair Ross.

2013 NEM SUMMIT – AGENDA

List of registered participants